Minimally invasive surgery refers to a surgical technique that makes a minimum incision needed during an operation and uses an endoscope, e.g., a laparoscope or thoracoscope, and a special surgical instrument to be extended through the incision for treatment and diagnosis purposes. Minimally invasive surgery has numerous advantages, such as less pain, faster recovery, and high safety.
During a minimally invasive surgery, surgical instruments are held by a surgeon to perform operation, and the endoscope is held by an assistant and is inserted through the incision to provide image information inside a body cavity, e.g., a chest cavity or an abdominal cavity, to the surgeon for facilitating the operation. However, since the endoscope is held by the assistant's hand which may become fatigued during a long surgery, hand trembling, delay in positioning and handling faults may incur a risk during operation.
A conventional image tracking system includes an image capturing module which captures a real-time image, a detection module which analyzes the real-time image and detects positions of instruments according to different color rings provided respectively on the instruments, and a processing module which emits controlling signal based on the positions of instruments to control the image capturing module to move to a desired position. All of the instruments must be sterile during the operation, but the color rings provided on the instruments might not satisfy this requirement.